It’s 1984 and Hackenbush’s broken heart is on the mend as she assists the very roguish, but devastatingly charming theater director, Monte Vista, in his last and greatest production. Mabel Hackenbush, better known as the singer, dancer, ukulele player extraordinaire, and front woman for Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra, has taken a chance on love and lost. After an epic binge, she can’t sing, won’t dance, and can only get through the day by focusing on her temp secretary job. Add in all this, the band has a big show coming up that Hackenbush might not be able to do in her current state of mind. Could this be the end of Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra? Into this dire situation saunters Monte Vista, theater maven supreme, who says he wants Hackenbush to help him write his memoirs. But for what he really wants… well, Hackenbush will have to call in reinforcements for that. And even then the outcome isn’t a sure thing.

Ginger Mayerson lives in Los Angeles, California. She’s published in the Coe Review, Roux Magazine, The Velvet Mafia, and The Journal of the Image Warehouse. Originally trained as a composer, she now writes novels, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews, makes collages, and edits the Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society and publishes books and magazines at the Wapshott Press in her spare time. You can find the Hackenbush scene at www.hackenbush.net. Or you can get the whole story at www.gingermayerson.com.